Dawnguard Beta Turns Out To Be A Clever Marketing Scam

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

If you haven’t yet heard then I’m letting you know the Dawnguard beta has gone live. What originally filled many gamers sleepless hearts with anticipation as they eagerly awaited the beta’s launch has turned to disappointment as only .005 or .5 percent of people who registered got in. According to Bethesda’s Blog

That’s right out of the 7780 people that registered (estimate I heard from a person who got in the beta on the forums) only .5 percent of them actually got into the beta. For those that don’t want to do the math that is around 38 people. 39 rounded up. An ultra low number but I’ll estimate it could go as high as 50-100 people.

Now yes that number could be low and the estimate for those that registered could be wrong with the real number way higher but I have confidence that what the user said was accurate. Unless I hear otherwise that the number is inaccurate I will stand by it.

Of course if the ultra low testers wasn’t bad enough, no one who registered outside the United States has gotten into the beta. Forum Admin Gstaff reportedly dodges the question when posed by users and Pete Hines is reported to have said that he had nothing to do with the selection process.

What the beta was, was a clever marketing scam to generate interest in the expansion and to bulk up their forums membership. Both worked out pretty well as the forums were flooded with many new members and I don’t recall the Elder Scrolls section ever being so busy. The buzz and good PR the Dawnguard beta generated were also palpable, leaving many with the belief that Bethesda was taking the time to do serious QA for Dawnguard to make sure only minimal bugs upon its launch on the 26th.

Yet with such an extremely small tester base one has to wonder how many bugs can be caught, with many people registering only to get a free copy of the DLC with little concern for actually helping the games development as many of those that were turned down were (I’m referring to several members on the forums who were extremely dedicated to finding bugs and hoped they would get into the beta.)

About the Author

Its not a beta if thousands are let in, the entire concept of a Beta has been lost over the years, and this is another reason why we get games that have tons of bugs and other issues, cause as you said most people sign up to get something free out of the deal and just play and never report any bugs.

Former Adventurer

Seriously ya’ll believe only 7780 people signing up up for the beta? LOL. That a sillier joke than the arrow to the knee meme

Phasmatis75

Since it isn’t a PC or multiconsole beta but only a 360 beta and given the conditions for signing up of having an accounts I believe that number could be legit. Especially if they aren’t counting any international entries as seems to be the case.

Phasmatis75

Skyrim’s bugs from my understanding come from the game being rushed to make that 11/11/11 deadline as several features that didn’t make it into the game (Economy and relatives taking dead peoples place) are on the disk but partisioned off as they cripple the game.

Bethesda as much as I love their games also doesn’t do a lot of QA. That is why New Vegas was buggy but fixed later by Obsidian is because Bethesda didn’t bother with QA. I imagine this practice was still in effect with Skyrim but I believe it has now been revized and could be the reason behind Prey 2’s push back.

Guest

lolz, love how all the serious comments that don’t agree with you get deleted.

Jammymacster

Yea it’s hilarious. Even the ones with valid points but no, you don’t agree with the blogger you don’t deserve to keep your comments. XD

He just doesn’t have a clue and makes a terrible argument so to make sure people don’t see the other half of the argument he just deletes the ones that don’t agree. Quite sad really.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1226621505 Joshua Hudson

hey bro… Obsidian did New Vegas… not Bethesda…

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1226621505 Joshua Hudson

You honestly did absolutely no research at all for this article. 8000 entries is preposterous. If your point about forum active is true then it would even show for it. Because you can’t even understand the correlation of your argument and claim this can’t be taken seriously as a display of legitimate journalism.

Go ahead, delete my post and lie to yourself every night

Phasmatis75

Yes but the publisher in the gaming industry is responsible for QA and Bethesda chose not to do so. This was in an interview with the guy behind Wasteland 2.

Guest

So why is it you don’t like the comments that disagree? It makes you look bad. Have you seen the thread on gamefaqs about you?

Phasmatis75

I have no problems with people disagreeing with me. I’m not perfect and can be wrong. The comments I have deleted weren’t deleted because they disagreed with me but because they were vulgar, rude, and didn’t contribute nothing to the topic.

If you look the three other comments (as of this writing) disagree with me. They stay because they do so constructively and with poise instead of just insulting me, calling my article crap, all the while offering no counter argument, alternative perspective, or evidence to the contrary.

I think it is pathetic that someone has to go and complain on a forum about me deleting their insult comments on my blog. As if I’m suppose to tolerate that on my website.

As for image, (note: talking about myself one of my least favorite things to do.) it is not my goal to make myself look good by deleting comments those comments.I want people to be happy and informed by my content but not all will be which is okay but that doesn’t give them an excuse to post garbage in the comments.

Thanks for commenting on the article and especially for taking time to ask me why I’m deleting rude comments from the website.

http://www.endofshow.com/ Kevin Beaumont

Xbox accounted for a majority of the Skyrim sales – I believe way more than PC and PS3 combined.

Phasmatis75

Yeah I didn’t think so but then after googling it found out you were right. 59 percent to be exact of 3.4 million sales. After the math that is 2,006,000 people.

I still think around 7780 is still a fair number and given that on the forums the top estimate for beta testers is 100 that doesn’t the number for applicants isn’t much higher than that by maybe 1000k. But like I said the number could be low and wrong but I believe it is close to the actually number. Given the amount of beta testers and influx of new members to the forums.

Satansjoker666

If only lets say 40 people at most really got in….there had to be numerous reasons why they were chosen. Hours put into the game, how diverse they were with their characters, like having 1 mage, 1 warrior, and 1 rogue style characters. Somebody that really put an effort to playing the whole game, not just one part of it.

Guest

Phasmatis never know what he is talking about and constantly feeds other people second hand info he is unsure of. Everyhone do yourself a favor and ignore him.

– Participant in the dawnguard beta

Phasmatis75

From my understanding most people that got in where brand new to the forums. We don’t know if they were selected for a reason or just at complete random.